Category: Uncategorized

JCC Ranch Camp’s Sports Track allows our sports loving campers to fully embrace their passions through various different athletic activities. Not only do campers get to experience new forms of athleticism, they also learn new skills and improve their coordination. Together and with a fun spirit, the sports track campers play all kinds of games. These games consist of capture the flag,  basketball, and even water kickball! Some of our more exciting sports include lacrosse, soccer, ultimate frisbee and many more! Ranch Camp’s sports staff really enjoy the Sports Track because of its flexibility in scheduling and because they feel like they have more fun than all the other tracks! Kids gain the unique experience to also learn from staff from all over the world during the sports track. They are able to learn different games from many different cultures and can take this knowledge back home with them! In addition to learning various games, kids are able to learn many valuable traits. These traits include team work, good sportsmanship, communication, and Ruach (Hebrew for “Spirit”). These are not skills specific just to games, but are applicable and beneficial to their daily lives. With a variety of games, absorbing knowledge of varying cultures and perspectives, plus gaining valuable life skills-what more could a sports loving camper want from a program?

Oh man, what a session. What a week! What an amazing way to kick off 2022.

As we wind down into our second soul-filling Shabbat of 2022, I couldn’t be more thrilled with the start to what has already been an amazing summer. We’ve had an action-packed Session 1 and the second week launched it truly into orbit. From seeing the sales pitches made during our camper ‘Shark Tank’ to the amazing acts including a live-singing of ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ during Kaleidoscope (our talent show) as well as a camp dog doing wild tricks on stage, it’s been a wild week of seeing campers step outside their comfort zones and show us the best they have to offer as their individual selves.

On top of all of that, we also broke the week up with some pretty intense competition! This past Thursday was the first of our three camper Maccabiahs for 2022, with an over-the-top afternoon where the green team ultimately took the cake (quite literally, for some of the challenges) at the end of the day. It was an awesome day culminated by the Mac-o-Peel, thecross-campus relay race that starts at the front gate and finishes all the way at Niven Field.

Weeks like this are a special time at camp. We break up and have some pretty serious competitive events, which, depending on your camper, may sometimes be taken a little too seriously! We struggle, we yell, we scream, all in the name of our team winning and, most importantly, having as much fun packed into a single day as we can. It’s a nice reminder at the end of the day, when we celebrate with a color powder party, that our teams, at the end of the day, don’t really matter too much. The wrap up of this day serves as an important reminder that we are one family, no matter who we are, what we look like, how we identify or where we come from.

Despite our early challenges in the session and taking an impromptu evacuation field trip to the Elbert County fairgrounds, it’s been so great having a ‘normal’ first session of 2022 so far.  It was great hearing our 8^th grades reflect on their four-day, and amazing to hear from all our campers on some of their reflections on what they’ve enjoyed most about camp during this week’s Shabbat service. I can’t wait for the stories to be shared with you.

Shabbat Shalom Ranch Camp. We’ll see you Sunday morning!

As we wrap up what has been a wild, insane, and, most importantly, successful year, I’d like to switch from my normal monthly espousal of relatable content for our community, to something lined up specifically to share with our past, current, and future Ranch Camp staff. 

As many of past years’ staff, families, and campers know, staffing in summer ’21 was exceptionally complicated, challenging, frustrating, overwhelming; there’s a thousand adjectives I could use and it couldn’t fully describe it. I’ve always felt that working at camp, more than even going to camp as a camper, was one of the defining forces in my life and truly made me who am as a human today. It turned a shy thirteen (yes, that was once an acceptable age to begin working at camp, and yes, I was once very shy) year old boy into an outgoing, sometimes-too-confident, and compassionate individual. It taught me the importance of truly listening to those who need an ear, it taught me about running a business, and it taught me, most importantly, that working at camp, is, at the end of the day, a job. 

A job, by definition in the Mirriam-Webster dictionary, is ‘a paid position of regular employment.’ Well, I can almost guarantee that camp is just about the most irregular job, with nationwide irregularities in pay. When I started at Ranch Camp, entry-level pay was abysmal. It was slightly better than when I started working at camp in 2003, where I earned about $600 for the entirety of the summer. While compensation has gone up in recent years, it certainly hasn’t increased nearly enough. If I didn’t make it clear enough above, working at camp is one of the most fun and rewarding jobs in the world. However, it’s often not mentioned that camp is also one of the most challenging, demanding, and exhausting jobs. I’ve heard it compared to everything, from deployment to crab fishing to rocket science – you name it, the comparison has been made. It is, without a doubt, the hardest job you’ll ever love. 

It’s why, in 2022, to bring in the best staff camp can, we are paying cabin staff positions at camp about 80% more than they were making last summer. Sure, an effective supervisory team is important. Sure, as you work your way up through the ranks at camp, salaries increase, just as with any job on the planet. However, our direct-care personnel have some of the most important jobs in the world – creating the experience of camp for the kids they live, work and journey through camp with. It’s critical to me, the administration of the JCC, and our lay leadership, that camp employment is considered, and feels as such in terms of compensation, a real job. It’s about as real and raw as some of the most demanding jobs on the planet, and the work done for campers literally changes lives. I cannot echo the thanks that all staff at Ranch Camp, and all the staff at camps around the globe, enough to make it worth it. The five year old in me, who learned not to get changed for swimming in the dining hall, thanks you. The ten year old in me, who developed a love for adventure in all forms, thanks you. The twenty year old in me, who learned from some of the best in the business on how to facilitate a three-day adventure for NYC teens, thanks you, beyond words, and from the bottom of my heart and the depths of my soul. 

In addition, one of the pleasures of both growing up at and working at camp is the connections you make with the team that you work with. I’m a big fan of bringing communities together, and camp is a place like no other to do so. It’s not abnormal to have international staff join you for a summer at camp, this summer will have more international staff from around more places on the globe than ever before, and I can’t wait to introduce our community to those we have already met. 

Looking forward to seeing you join, rejoin or reconnect with our family in 2022. 

#projectrealjob, #campismyhappyplace, #haveagreatnewyear

Sincerely,

Ryan Bocchino